Pregnant New Zealand journalist forced to move to Afghanistan

With New Zealand keeping its borders closed due to COVID restrictions, pregnant journalist Charlotte Bellis has been stuck outside her home country, forced to ask the Taliban for help.


Afghanistan hospitals struggle to provide maternal care to expectant mothers (file photo)

New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis has said she is stuck in Afghanistan after the New Zealand government rejected her emergency application for return over coronavirus restrictions. Left without an option, she was forced to seek refuge in Taliban-led Afghanistan as a "pregnant, unmarried woman," Bellis said in an open letter published by The New Zealand Herald on Friday.

Bellis formerly worked for Al-Jazeera, which is based in Qatar. She had been covering the fallout of last summer's Taliban takeover from Afghanistan before she returned to Qatar in September. She said this was the time when she learned she was pregnant. As extramarital sex is illegal in Qatar, Bellis attempted to get back to New Zealand using a lottery-style system for returning citizens.

Unable to secure her return in that manner, she left Qatar for Belgium, the home country of her partner, freelance photographer Jim Huylebroek. With her New Zealand passport, however, she was only allowed to spend a limited time in Belgium. The couple was eventually forced to relocate to Afghanistan as they both had valid visas to stay there.

Bellis said she set up a meeting with her senior Taliban contacts and asked if her pregnancy would be a problem. She was told it would not.

"Just tell people you're married and if it escalates, call us. Don't worry," the Taliban officials said, according to Bellis.
Questioning New Zealand's treatment of its citizens

Bellis, known for asking the Taliban about their treatment of women, said she has now been forced to ask the New Zealand government the same questions.

"I am writing this because I believe in transparency and I believe that we as a country are better than this. [Prime Minister] Jacinda Ardern is better than this,​​" Bellis wrote, explaining that she sent 59 documents to New Zealand authorities before her application for an emergency return was rejected.

Bellis said she responded by contacting her lawyer, a friend who deals in public relations and a New Zealand politician, with the information about her case eventually reaching New Zealand's COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. Two days after her rejection, she received another email stating that her application status has been changed from "deactivated" to "reviewing application."

Bellis is due to give birth to a girl in May. She said that giving birth in Afghanistan could be a death sentence, as the country struggles with a poor state of maternity care and lack of surgical capabilities.

"I wasn't triggered by the disappointment and uncertainty, but by the breach of trust," Bellis wrote. "That in my time of need, the New Zealand Government said you're not welcome here."
Government clarifies its stance

The government of New Zealand has been increasingly questioned over its COVID policies that force even returning citizens to spend 10 days in quarantine hotels run by the military. The requirement has created a backlog of thousands of people who want to return home.

In response to Bellis' letter in the Herald, COVID response minister Hipkins said he had asked officials to check whether proper procedures were followed in her case.

The joint head of New Zealand's Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) system, Chris Bunny, said Bellis' application did not meet the "travel within 14 days" requirement currently in play for emergency entry. He said the MIQ team had reached out to Bellis to make another application that fit the requirements.

But Bellis, on Twitter, said the "MIQ has and does allow travel outside 14 days" and that the couple had outlined their reason for doing so, primarily the lack of regular flights out of the Kabul airport, in the cover letter of their application.

While Bellis' case appears to be moving forward, she said she was compelled to write the column as her story was "unique in context, but not in desperation."

 Stuff photographer wins New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year

Ella Morgan, Oct 27 2022

Taranaki-based photographer Andy MacDonald has been named New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year, marking the third consecutive year a Stuff photographer has taken out the prize.

MacDonald was awarded the prestigious title for a portfolio of images covering social stories, landscapes and wildlife.

“The images were full of colour, action and meaning,” said New Zealand Geographic publisher James Frankham.

READ MORE:
* Stuff photographer scoops New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year award
* 'In the right place with the right lens': Stuff photojournalist Alden Williams wins prestigious award
* Wellington photographer takes out New Zealand Geographic photographer of the year award

“It’s the result of hard graft as a photojournalist, and the eye of an artist looking for patterns, juxtaposing subjects, making angles.”

Macdonald receives a $30,000 Heritage Expeditions voyage for his win.

He also won the Lightforce Aerial category at the New Zealand Geographic awards.

ANDY MACDONALD/SUPPLIED

Stuff photographer Andy MacDonald has been named New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year for his portfolio of images covering social stories, landscapes and wildlife.

In addition to MacDonald’s big win, Stuff photographers also took out awards across three other categories.

Ryan Anderson won Electric Kiwi Young Photographer of the Year for his portfolio of social documentary photography.

Ricky Wilson claimed the Lumix Society award for his image of a dressing room at a drag cabaret on Auckland’s Karangahape Road.

ANDY MACDONALD/SUPPLIED

New Zealand Geographic publisher James Frankham said that MacDonald’s photos were “full of colour, action and meaning”.

The Resene Built Environment category was won by Mike Scott for his photo of a silhouette on a bridge in Hamilton.

More than 6000 entries were submitted to seven different categories in this year’s contest – the largest number of submissions in the competition’s history.

“2022 marked a change for Kiwis, a cautious re-emergence from social distancing into a world of gradually increasing freedoms,” Frankham said in a statement.

ANDY MACDONALD/SUPPLIED

MacDonald’s images were the “result of hard graft as a photojournalist”, said New Zealand Geographic publisher James Frankham.

“We were flooded with images of quiet hope, resurgent social gatherings, and in particular, photographs of nature that were dramatically backlit or featured figures dwarfed in their landscape – images of the natural world that evoked awe, scale and the intrinsic power of land and sea.”

Finalists’ work is being showcased at a free public exhibition at the Britomart Precinct in downtown Auckland, and is also available to view on the New Zealand Geographic website.

ANDY MACDONALD/SUPPLIED

Stuff photographer Andy MacDonald has been named New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wins historic reelection

Ardern’s Covid-19 response was hailed around the world. Now her party has won a landslide victory.

By Anna North Oct 17, 2020

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivers her victory speech in Auckland, New Zealand, after being reelected in a historic landslide win on October 17. 

Lynn Grieveson/Newsroom/Getty Images


New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been hailed around the world for her government’s quick action on Covid-19, which has helped New Zealand avoid the mass infections and deaths that have devastated the US and Europe. Now, voters in the country have responded to her leadership by handing Ardern and her Labour Party their biggest election victory in 50 years.

Ardern, 40, gained international attention when she became prime minister in 2017, then one of the world’s youngest female leaders. At the beginning of this year, her center-left party looked set for a tight election due to a lack of progress on issues it had promised to prioritize, like housing and reducing child poverty, CNN reported.

Then came Covid-19. Ardern responded swiftly, with an early lockdown that essentially eliminated spread of the virus. She also spoke directly to New Zealanders with a warmth and empathy that’s been lacking in other world leaders, helping to soothe New Zealanders’ anxieties and getting them on board with coronavirus restrictions. To date, New Zealand has reported fewer than 2,000 cases and 25 deaths due to Covid-19.

In Saturday’s election, Ardern’s party is on track to win 64 of the 120 seats in the country’s parliament, according to Reuters. That would give the Labour Party decisive control of the government, allowing it to govern without having to form a coalition, and granting Ardern and her allies more power than ever to chart New Zealand’s course through the pandemic and beyond.

“We will build back better from the Covid crisis,” Ardern said in her acceptance speech on Saturday, evoking a slogan also used by former US Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. “This is our opportunity.”

Ardern has always been popular abroad. Now she has a mandate at home.

Ardern has maintained a high profile around the world since she was elected, as Damien Cave reports at the New York Times. It wasn’t just her youth that drew attention — she also became the first world leader in nearly 30 years to give birth while in office in 2018. Her six-week parental leave was hailed as groundbreaking, showing the importance of paid leave for parents at a time when many — especially in the US — struggle to access this benefit. (In New Zealand, new parents can access up to 26 weeks of paid leave funded by the government.)

But Ardern hasn’t always been as successful at home as she was popular abroad. Leading a coalition with the nationalist New Zealand First Party, she has struggled to deliver on progressive promises like making housing more affordable and tackling climate change, Cave reports.

Covid-19 then changed everything. Ardern was praised not just around the world but in New Zealand, where her quick action meant that many children could go back to school, and adults could return to work, while countries like the US saw a surge in infections.

Meanwhile, her personal addresses amid the pandemic to New Zealanders were lauded for their directness and warmth. In April, for example, she reassured the country’s children that both the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny were considered essential workers.

Ardern’s response was in many ways the embodiment of one of her leadership mantras: “Be strong, be kind.” Ardern’s effectiveness, alongside strong responses by Germany’s Angela Merkel, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen, and others, even led some to wonder if female leaders were better at handling the pandemic than male leaders.

And now, her constituents have voted to keep her at the helm as New Zealand continues to weather Covid-19. With a majority in the country’s parliament, Labour will be able to form a single-party government that may give Ardern greater ability to deliver on her priorities than she’s had in the past.

Despite this mandate, Ardern’s second term will bring new challenges including repairing an economy weakened by successive lockdowns, and ensuring her majority is able to deliver on its campaign promises. “She has significant political capital,” Jennifer Curtin, director of the Public Policy Institute at the University of Auckland, told the Times. “She’s going to have to fulfill her promises with more substance.”

But Ardern says she’s ready to get to work. The campaign slogan that carried her to victory was simple: “Let’s keep moving.”

Incumbent PM Arden Wins New Zealand Election by Landslide
October 17, 2020




New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has won a landslide victory in the country’s general election. With most ballots tallied, Ardern’s Labour Party has won 49% of the vote and she is projected to win a rare outright parliamentary majority. The opposition centre-right National Party, currently on 27%, has admitted defeat in Saturday’s poll.

The vote was originally due to be in September, but was postponed by a month after a renewed Covid-19 outbreak.

More than a million people had already voted in early polling which opened up on October 3. New Zealanders were also asked to vote in two referendums alongside the general election.

According to the Electoral Commission, the Labour Party are on 49% of the vote, followed by the National Party on 27%, and the ACT New Zealand and Green parties on 8%.

“New Zealand has shown the Labour Party its greatest support in almost 50 years,” Ardern told her supporters after the victory. “We will not take your support for granted. And I can promise you we will be a party that governs for every New Zealander.”

National Party leader Judith Collins congratulated Ardern and promised her party would be a “robust opposition”.

“Three years will be gone in the blink of an eye,” she said, referring to the next scheduled election. “We will be back.”

Ardern’s Labour Party is projected to win 64 seats – enough for an outright majority. No party has managed to do so in New Zealand since it introduced a voting system known as Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP) in 1996.

Before the vote, experts doubted whether the Labour Party could win such a majority. Professor Jennifer Curtin of the University of Auckland said previous party leaders had been tipped to win a majority, but failed to do so.

“New Zealand voters are quite tactical in that they split their vote, and close to 30% give their party vote to a smaller party, which means it is still a long shot that Labour will win over 50% of the vote.”

Ardern pledged to instil more climate-friendly policies, boost funding for disadvantaged schools and raise income taxes on top earners.

Collins and the National Party had pledged to increase investment in infrastructure, pay down debt and temporarily reduce taxes.
Tags: Incumbent

New Zealand grapples with Delta – and Tucker Carlson

Despite domestic and foreign criticism, the Ardern government’s early lockdown strategy works and enjoys New Zealanders’ support.



OPINION
Glen Johnson
A New Zealand reporter
20 Sep 2021

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Commissioner of Police Andrew Coster speak during a press conference in Wellington on September 4, 2021, after the country recorded its first COVID-related death in six months [Mark Mitchell/AFP]


On August 17, a 58-year-old man from Auckland became symptomatic and tested positive for COVID-19. It was New Zealand’s first community case of the coronavirus in almost six months.

Within hours, the nation of five million moved into alert level four, part of its “go hard, go early” approach. All travel outside of people’s homes was forbidden, except to fetch supplies, visit pharmacies or exercise.

The country largely ground to a halt.

“We have seen the dire consequences of taking too long to act in other countries, not least our neighbours,” said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, while announcing the cabinet’s decision to impose a lockdown that evening.

Within a few days, one case had grown to 21 cases. After a week, to 148 cases. By August 31, the cluster contained 612 cases.

One month after imposing the snap lockdown, New Zealand has bent the curve and may be able to eliminate an outbreak of the potent Delta variant of COVID-19 – though it is no sure thing.

As of September 20, some 1,051 people in Auckland and 17 people in the capital city, Wellington, have been infected with the virus, of whom 694 have recovered. Contact tracers have methodically identified tens of thousands of contacts – and hundreds of locations of interest – part of an updated track-and-trace system repurposed to cast a much wider net around the far more transmissible Delta variant.

The outbreak, now spread across 20 subclusters, 10 of which have been epidemiologically linked, presents the most serious challenge to elimination that New Zealand has faced so far. With its fragmented public health system under intense strain from decades of under-funding, any unchecked spread of the Delta variant would see hospitals rapidly overwhelmed.

But New Zealanders rallied behind the restrictions, sticking to their “bubbles”, masking up and watching patiently as cases peaked, then began to decline – though the outbreak’s tail is proving persistent.

If the country does eliminate this outbreak, it would once again validate the “go hard, go early” approach that officials have taken over the past 18 months. With Auckland set to move to the more permissive alert level three at 11:59pm on September 21, case numbers over the coming weeks will be closely watched for any sign of uncontained spread.

Entitlement and denunciation

Yet, as with previous outbreaks, the clamour from critics of the government started almost immediately, a chorus of whinge.

Business special interests laundered their messaging through an uncritical media – “certainty” they chanted, while pressuring for a move down alert levels.

“We also know that in lockdown Treasury has forecast it to cost the country NZ$1.45 billion [$1.02bn] per week – and that’s just the economic impact,” Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce chief executive Leeann Watson told broadcaster Newstalk ZB.

Incredibly, less than a week into lockdown, Export New Zealand executive director Catherine Beard complained to Stuff, the country’s most popular news website, that the business environment was getting “tough” for exporters, while lobbying for more managed isolation spots for business travellers – or self-isolation. “Some of these are multimillion-dollar deals, so the situation is very stressful,” she said.

Some in the hospitality sector complained about limits on gatherings and threatened to withhold tax, while demanding “targeted” assistance from the government.

“Now it’s 100 per cent [Ministry of] Health running the show,” said Hospitality New Zealand chief executive Julie White, according to Stuff. “No one is advising them commercially.”

Most New Zealanders would, presumably, prefer that the Health Ministry – as opposed to hospitality interest groups – responds to the threat presented by a lethal, airborne pathogen.

The “glacial” pace of the country’s vaccine rollout was also riffed off in headline after headline.

Perhaps, as the political opposition and reporters contend, the rollout has been “sluggish”.

Perhaps the government could have instructed the medical regulator Medsafe to conduct a less rigorous assessment of the Pfizer vaccine, under emergency protocols.

“Another [possibility] is,” Craig McCulloch, Radio New Zealand’s deputy political editor speculated, “that the government’s negotiators came late to the party, did a poor job and got a raw deal.”

Or perhaps soaring global demand amid the pandemic, Pfizer’s finite ability to supply vaccines to a vast suite of countries and New Zealand’s limited purchasing power and largely COVID-free status explains the “delay”. Certainly, the World Health Organization has described vaccine hoarding by wealthy nations as approaching a “catastrophic moral failure”.

When Pfizer became able to deliver large shipments midway through July, New Zealand saw a dramatic scale-up in the vaccination programme, as officials had promised for months.

If anything, the nation’s rollout – a massive logistical undertaking – has largely been a success story, conducted in an environment of incredible uncertainty and reliant upon an already stretched workforce. It has additionally played a key role in supporting vaccination efforts in the Cook Islands.

As of September 20, some 4,711,410 doses of the vaccine have been administered, tracking close to supply, with 1,618,673 people now fully vaccinated.

Amid the rising racket, the entitlement and denunciation, even commentators from abroad got in on the act.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson – agitating anti-lockdown sentiment – suggested that New Zealand provided a model for how his viewers would be subjugated by Joe Biden’s administration.

“How far can they go? […] A single COVID case in New Zealand, not a death from COVID, but a case of COVID has shut down the entire country.”

Writing in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, one commentator called the outbreak “poetic justice” and claimed a “once-welcoming nation is turning into an isolated dystopia, where liberties are taken away in a heartbeat and outsiders are shunned”.

While these criticisms are couched in the language of defending civil liberties, they reduce to variants of the “learn to live with COVID” argument.

Or put another way: “the cure cannot be worse than the disease”.

The economy must reign supreme, after all.

Sound familiar?

‘Needles in my eyes’

New Zealand’s elimination strategy relies on public buy-in. Recent polling shows that some 84 percent of the public supports the latest lockdown.

As with previous outbreaks, Ardern has used clear, empathetic language to reassure and unify an often politically divided nation. These briefings are held in parliament’s theatrette and usually feature the Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

For many in New Zealand, the daily press briefings provide a detailed window into how authorities manage outbreaks and have been the most visible key to the elimination strategy’s success.

“To all Aucklanders, you have done an amazing job so far protecting yourselves, your family and your community,” Ardern said on September 13, while announcing that Auckland would stay in alert level four for another week. “We owe you a huge debt of gratitude … but the cases are telling us we have additional work to do.”

Voters rewarded Ardern’s Labour Party for this kind of humane approach and its exceptional management of the viral threat in the national elections last October, granting it an outright majority.

The political opposition judges these briefings a political threat, and routinely denigrates them as Ardern speaking from “The Podium of Truth”.

With the return of daily briefings on August 17, right-wing broadcasters and some journalists began to deride the briefings, at exactly the moment when trust in the authorities needed to be reinforced.

There is a difference between “holding power to account” and deliberately attempting, for purely partisan political reasons, to undermine public perceptions that the COVID-19 response is being well managed.

“I tried, I really did, but I wanted to stick needles in my eyes by about four minutes in,” said Newstalk ZB’s Kate Hawkesby, the day after the return of the 1pm press conferences. “I’d forgotten how soul-destroying it is to be spoken to like a three year old.”

On the same station, Hawkesby’s husband, Mike Hosking, overdubbed turkey “gobbles” and truck horn sound effects onto an interview recorded with Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall.

Newstalk ZB’s political editor, Barry Soper, in a report about an Auckland man whose kidney surgery was postponed due to staffing shortages, loaded his story’s preamble with phrases like “their altar” and “practise what they preach”.

He also issued a remarkable dog-whistle to New Zealand’s far-right, the kind of people who believe Ardern – a fairly mild political centrist – is turning the country into a communist dictatorship.

“If you have ever wondered what it must have been like to live in a totalitarian state, then perhaps wonder no more.”

This nonsense went on and on.

Some press gallery reporters began to complain about the length of Ardern’s introductions, while Jason Walls, a political reporter with Newstalk ZB, took to Twitter to moan about Bloomfield saying “finally” two times.

This speaks to how the media has fundamentally misunderstood what the briefings are: public service announcements.

They are for the public. Reporters are invited as a check and, as such, should resist the urge to demand a say in how these announcements are structured.

Even the New York Times managed to launder messaging that targeted the briefings, quoting former National Party staffer and political commentator Ben Thomas – who appears fixated on denigrating Bloomfield.

“He [Bloomfield] has … a cult-like following,” said Thomas. “The country has a huge kind of parasocial devotion to him, which is very new to New Zealand.”

Apparently, Thomas has not heard of Michael Joseph Savage, who founded New Zealand’s welfare state in the 1930s and whose framed photo hung in homes throughout the country for decades.

Regardless, all of this is a fairly obvious partisan political effort, driven by both ideology and market dynamics.

Many reporters and commentators at New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), which owns the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB, seem unable to accept that their preferred political tribe is no longer in power.

More critically, in an age where the news media increasingly attempts to attract subscribers by catering to their social and political values, NZME appears to be ring-fencing centre-to-far-right eyeballs.

It is, essentially, becoming New Zealand’s Fox News.

A brave new world

The sense in New Zealand is that this may be the last of the nation’s sledgehammer-style lockdowns, though one hopes officials do not retire lockdowns altogether.

The goal is to get as many people as possible vaccinated, assess the impact of opening up, and then tentatively start easing some border restrictions, if possible. No doubt, certain industries – tourism, hospitality, horticulture, media – will continue to apply relentless pressure.

Yet, when the nation reconnects more fully to the networks of global trade and travel, the super-highways of hyper-globalisation that have spread disease and death around the world, when the inevitable outbreaks come, there will be a toll.


The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.


Glen Johnson
A New Zealand reporter
Johnson is a New Zealand reporter who worked as a foreign correspondent for more than a decade, mostly out of the Middle East and North Africa.

From Kabul, pregnant reporter fights NZ govt to come home


In this recent photo provided by Charlotte Bellis, Bellis poses in a selfie with her partner Jim Huylebroek in Kabul, Afghanistan. Bellis, a pregnant New Zealand reporter who is expecting her first child with Huylebroek, has chosen Afghanistan as a temporary base for her uphill fight to return home because of her country's stringent COVID-19 entry rules. Huylebroek, a freelance photographer and Belgium native, has lived in Afghanistan for two years. 

(Charlotte Bellis via AP) 

KATHY GANNON
Sun, January 30, 2022

ISLAMABAD (AP) — She reported on the difficult conditions mothers and babies face just to survive in desperate Afghanistan. Now, a pregnant New Zealand reporter has chosen Kabul as a temporary base for her uphill fight to return home because of her country's strict COVID-19 entry rules.

Charlotte Bellis, 35, is expecting her first child with her partner, freelance photographer Jim Huylebroek, a Belgium native who has lived in Afghanistan for two years. Bellis, who is 25 weeks pregnant with a daughter, told The Associated Press on Sunday that each day is a battle.

She said she has been vaccinated three times and is ready to isolate herself upon her return to New Zealand. “This is ridiculous. It is my legal right to go to New Zealand, where I have health care, where I have family. All my support is there," she said.

Bellis first wrote about her difficulties in a column published in The New Zealand Herald on Saturday. She had tried without success to enter New Zealand via a lottery-style system and then applied for an emergency return, but was rejected.

Thousands of New Zealand citizens wanting to return home have faced delays due to a bottleneck of people in the country's border quarantine system.

On Monday, New Zealand’s COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said officials had suggested Bellis amend her application or try again under different criteria.

“I want to be clear, there is a place in Managed Isolation and Quarantine for people with special circumstances like Ms Bellis. No one’s saying there is not," Hipkins said. He said while officials had needed to make some difficult choices, the quarantine system had worked well overall by saving lives and preventing the health system from getting swamped.

However, Bellis insists the decisions have been arbitrary. She said she sent dozens of documents to the New Zealand authorities, including ultrasounds and physicians' letters specifying her due date is around May 19. Yet she said she was rejected because she was told her pregnancy didn’t meet the criteria of “threshold of critical time threat.”

“If I don’t meet the threshold as a pregnant woman, then who does?” she asked.

Bellis had worked as an Afghanistan correspondent for Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network. In November, she resigned, because it is illegal to be pregnant and unmarried in Qatar. Al Jazeera did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bellis then flew to Belgium, trying to get residency there, but said the length of the process would have left her in the country with an expired visa. She said she could have hopped from country to country on tourist visas while she waited to have her baby. She said this would have meant spending money on hotels without support or health care, while she fought to return to New Zealand.

In the end, she and her partner returned to Afghanistan because they had a visa, felt welcome and from there could wage her battle to return to her home. They have a house in Afghanistan and after “evaluating all of our options,” returned to Kabul, she said.

Bellis said she has set herself a deadline for leaving Afghanistan once she is 30 weeks pregnant, to protect the health of herself and her baby. “I am giving myself to the end of February,” she said. At that time, she will still have more than a month left on her Belgium visa so that she can re-enter the country, if she fails to get back to New Zealand by that time.

She said she tries to stay calm as she wages a paper war with New Zealand's quarantine system, but that she worries about how the stress she has been under will impact her baby.

“I am very concerned about a premature birth and ... also the implication of stress,” she said.

Bellis has found an Afghan gynecologist, who promised she could call her if she wakes up in the night with a problem. Bellis toured the doctor's clinic which has basic facilities, including one incubator. The doctor told her the incubator is often occupied.

Bellis has found a lawyer who is handling her case pro bono and has submitted over 60 documents to the New Zealand government, answered countless questions, only to be rejected twice for entry to her home country.

On Sunday, she received another email from the New Zealand government, this one telling her to apply as a person in danger and that this will get her home, she said.

Bellis said that prior to returning to Afghanistan, she sought permission from the Taliban. She said she had feared arriving "with a little bump and not married” could be problematic.

Instead, the Taliban response was immediate and positive.

“I appreciate this isn't official Taliban policy, but they were very generous and kind. They said ‘you are safe here, congratulations, we welcome you'," said Bellis.

The Taliban have come under international criticism for repressive rules they imposed on women since sweeping to power in mid-August, including denying girls education beyond sixth grade. However, they have said that all girls and women will be allowed to attend school after the Afghan New Year at the end of March. While women have returned to work in the health and education ministries, thousands of female civil servants have not been allowed to return to their jobs.

As she ponders her next move, Bellis said she is contemplating whether to take the latest option offered by New Zealand — applying as a person in danger — because it would exonerate the government of responsibility for her earlier rejections.

“It gives them an opportunity to deny any responsibility and frankly that is not true,” she said. The government's current COVID-19 policy has left “how many stranded around the world with no pathways to get home.”

Hipkins, the New Zealand minister, said officials had offered Bellis several options. Bellis said the only other option after her two rejections was Sunday's offer — to apply as a person in danger.

“I encourage her to take these offers seriously,” said Hipkins.

___

Associated Press reporter Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report.

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/01/pregnant-new-zealand-journalist-forced.html

Under-pressure New Zealand sets out carbon-zero plan

New Zealand's new carbon-cutting climate plans have been slammed by environmental groups for not doing enough on emissions from agriculture 

William WEST AFP/File

Issued on: 13/10/2021 - 

Wellington (AFP)

New Zealand put forward a raft of carbon-cutting plans Wednesday, ranging from reduced car usage to making ebikes more accessible to meet its target of becoming carbon-zero by 2050.

But the proposals, which come ahead of the COP26 climate meeting of world leaders in Glasgow at the end of this month and are a forerunner to the government's emissions reduction plan next May, drew immediate criticism.

New Zealand is under pressure to do more to curb carbon emissions, which are increasing, but the discussion document made little mention of agriculture which contributes 48 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmental group Greenpeace said the document was "full of meaningless waffle" that did little to broach the conversation on reducing agricultural emissions.

Climate activists Generation Zero called it a "disgrace" that failed to meet "unambitious emissions budgets, completely ignores agriculture -- which makes up half of our emissions".

However, Climate Change Minister James Shaw said there was "an entire work program" dealing with the agricultural sector and "we didn't want to waste people's time by including things that have either already been consulted on or have other kind of engagement processes elsewhere."

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the plans would reduce emissions and "can also create jobs and new opportunities for Kiwi businesses and our economy".

The document comes almost two years after New Zealand passed its Zero Carbon Act and a year after it declared a climate emergency.

Ardern has previously described action on climate change as a matter of "life or death" but has been called out by Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who accused New Zealand of being "one of the world's worst performers" on emission increases.

"People believe Jacinda Ardern and people like that are climate leaders," Thunberg said last month.

"That just tells you how little people know about the climate crisis. Obviously, the emissions haven't fallen. It goes without saying that these people are not doing anything."

Many of the initiatives contained in the discussion document are from the Climate Change Commission report presented to the government earlier this year, including a 20 percent reduction in the use of cars by 2035.

In the same period, it wants to reduce emissions from transport fuels by 15 percent, make public transport cheaper and more accessible, and introduce incentives for those on low incomes to buy electric vehicles.

Other ideas include the development of low-emission fuels, such as bioenergy and hydrogen, eliminating the use of fossil gas, reducing food waste and encouraging composting.

© 2021 AFP

The AP Interview: James Shaw wants climate talks to deliver

By NICK PERRY

1 of 6

New Zealand's Climate Change Minister James Shaw speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in his office in Wellington, New Zealand, Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2021. The coronavirus pandemic has shown that humans are very good at responding to an immediate crisis, says Shaw. But when it comes to dealing with a slower-moving threat like climate change, he says, we're "terribly bad." (AP Photo/Sam James)


WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic has shown that humans are very good at responding to an immediate crisis, says New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister James Shaw. But when it comes to dealing with a slower-moving threat like climate change, he says, we’re “terribly bad.”

Shaw spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday ahead of a key climate summit that starts in Glasgow, Scotland, on Oct. 31. Many environmentalists say the U.N. summit, known as COP26, represents the world’s final chance to avert a climate catastrophe.

Shaw said that at Glasgow, he intends to announce a more ambitious target for New Zealand’s emissions reductions over the coming decade, and he hopes many other countries also aim higher.

He said a top priority will be to ensure that a promise made by wealthier nations to provide $100 billion a year to help poorer countries switch to cleaner energy is fulfilled.

“The developed world so far has not delivered on that promise,” Shaw said.

That has led to a breakdown in trust and a fraying of the consensus reached with the 2015 Paris Agreement, he said. It’s also giving an excuse to authoritarian regimes to disrupt international cooperation, he added.

Shaw said the pandemic had accelerated the transition to cleaner energy in some countries. But in many developing nations it had slowed improvements, he said, because they were struggling simply to cope with the massive financial and social impacts from the disease.

Shaw said he has doubts whether some of the positive environmental changes made by people during the pandemic — like working from home more and driving less — will endure.

“I think those are possibilities, but I also think human beings tend to revert to type,” Shaw said. “I know when we’re in the middle of it, it feels like the world has changed fundamentally.”

New Zealand’s government has promised the country will become carbon-neutral by 2050. But it has also faced criticism for talking a lot about climate change and not taking action quickly enough. Greenhouse gas emissions in the nation of 5 million reached an all-time high just before the pandemic hit.

Shaw said lawmakers have passed many new bills in recent years that will have a positive impact over time, including a ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration, tougher emissions standards for cars, a subsidy scheme for electric vehicles, and the establishment of a climate change commission.

“Is it enough? No. And the thing is, it never will be enough,” Shaw said. “We know that every single year, we are going to have to continue to take new and further actions on climate change because this is a multi-generational battle over the course of the next 30 years and beyond. It’s going to involve every part of our economy, every part of our society.”

Climate scientist James Renwick said he thinks New Zealand and other nations need to bring more urgency to their actions.

New Zealand's climate scientist James Renwick speaks in his office in Wellington, New Zealand, Wednesday Oct. 13, 2021. The coronavirus pandemic has shown that humans are very good at responding to an immediate crisis, says New Zealand's Climate Change Minister James Shaw. But when it comes to dealing with a slower-moving threat like climate change, he says, we're "terribly bad." Renwick said he thinks New Zealand and other nations need to bring more urgency to their actions. (AP Photo/Sam James)

“The countries of the world have talked about this issue for many years, but we still haven’t really seen the action, and time has got extremely short now,” said Renwick, a professor at the Victoria University of Wellington. “We’ve got to see emissions reduction starting immediately, 2022, and we have to get emissions down really fast in the next decade.”

Almost half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture — think millions of cows burping methane gas — in an economy that relies on exporting food. Many environmentalists say farmers are essentially getting a free pass from lawmakers.

Shaw said farmers will be subject to new emissions rules that will come into effect by 2025, and that many are finding innovative ways to reduce their carbon footprints.

He said an important part of his trip to Glasgow will be to stand alongside colleagues from low-lying Pacific islands who are already feeling extensive effects from climate change through more severe cyclones and rising sea levels.

He said the Cook Islands, for instance, spends about a quarter of its national budget on mitigating the effects of climate change.

Shaw acknowledges the irony that thousands of people from around the world will be burning many tons of fossil fuels to fly to Glasgow for the talks.

“Unfortunately, it’s the only way that we can practically get there and proactively participate,” Shaw said.

Renwick said that aspect didn’t bother him too much.

“We all live in the world we live in, the one that’s been created over the last century or more,” Renwick said. “I think it’s just the way it is. You have to burn a bit of fossil fuel to work out how to stop doing that.”

New Zealand navy ships head to tsunami-hit Tonga with water and supplies

Issued on: 19/01/2022 

HMNZS Aotearoa departs to bring water and aid to Tonga after a volcanic eruption and tsunami, from Auckland, New Zealand, January 18, 2022 © New Zealand Defence Force via Reuters

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Two New Zealand navy vessels will arrive in Tonga on Friday, carrying much-needed water and other supplies for the Pacific island nation reeling from a volcanic eruption and tsunami, and largely cut off from the outside world

Hundreds of homes in Tonga's smaller outer islands have been destroyed, and at least three people were killed after Saturday's huge eruption triggered tsunami waves, which rolled over the islands causing what the government has called an unprecedented disaster.

With its airport smothered under a layer of volcanic ash and communications badly hampered by the severing of an undersea cable, information on the scale of the devastation has mostly come from reconnaissance aircraft.

"For the people of Tonga, we're heading their way now with a whole lot of water," Simon Griffiths, captain of the HMNZS Aotearoa, said in a release.

Griffiths said his ship was carrying 250,000 litres of water, and had the capacity to produce another 70,000 litres a day, along with other supplies.

New Zealand's foreign ministry said the Tongan government has approved the arrival of Aotearoa and the HMNZS Wellington in the COVID-free nation, where concerns about a potential coronavirus outbreak are likely to complicate relief efforts.

Tonga has said its water supplies have been contaminated by ash from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano, which erupted with a blast heard 2,300 km (1,430 miles) away in New Zealand. It also sent tsunami waves across the Pacific Ocean.

James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said the force of the eruption was estimated to be equivalent to five to 10 megatons of TNT, an explosive force more than 500 times the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War Two.

The Red Cross said its teams in Tonga were distributing drinking water across the islands where salt water from the tsunami and volcanic ash were "polluting the clean drinking water sources of tens of thousands of people".

Other countries and agencies including the United Nations are drawing up plans to send aid.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said it would send help, including water and food, when the archipelago's main Fua'amotu International Airport reopens. It was not damaged but was covered in ash, which is being cleared manually,

"We thought that it would be operational yesterday, but it hasn't been fully cleared yet because more ash has been falling," Fiji-based U.N. co-ordinator Jonathan Veitch said on Wednesday.

Pacific neighbour Fiji will send defence engineers on Australia's HMAS Adelaide, which is due to set sail from Brisbane for Tonga on Friday, a Fiji military spokesman told a briefing in Suva.

A second New Zealand Defence P3 Orion surveillance flight will fly over Tonga on Wednesday to assess damage, the foreign ministry said.
Clean-up

Waves reaching up to 15 metres hit the outer Ha'apia island group, destroying all of the houses on the island of Mango, as well as the west coast of Tonga's main island, Tongatapu, the prime minister's office said.

On the west coast of Tongatapu, residents were being moved to evacuation centres as 56 houses were destroyed or seriously damaged on that coast.

New Zealand said power has now been restored, and clean-up and damage assessments were going on and Tongan authorities were distributing relief supplies.

Australia and New Zealand have promised immediate financial assistance. The U.S. Agency for International Development approved $100,000 in immediate assistance to support people affected by volcanic eruptions and tsunami waves.

Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni has met the heads of diplomatic missions to discuss aid, the office said.

Tonga is still largely offline after the volcano severed the sole undersea fibre-optics communication cable.

International mobile phone network provider Digicel has set up an interim system on Tongatapu using the University of South Pacific's satellite dish, the New Zealand foreign ministry said.

That would allow a 2G connection to be established but the connection is patchy and amounts to about 10% of usual capacity,

U.S. cable company SubCom has advised it will take at least four weeks for Tonga's cable be repaired, it added.
Remote aid

Tongan communities abroad have posted images from families on Facebook, giving a glimpse of the devastation, with homes reduced to rubble, fallen trees, cracked roads and sidewalks and everything coated with grey ash.

Aid agencies, including the United Nations, are preparing to get relief supplies to Tonga at a distance to avoid introducing the coronavirus, Veitch said.

Tonga is one of the few countries that is COVID-19 free and an outbreak there would disastrous, he said.

"We believe that we will be able to send flights with supplies. We're not sure that we can send flights with personnel and the reason for this is that Tonga has a very strict COVID-free policy," Veitch told a briefing.

"They've been very cautious about opening their borders like many Pacific islands, and that's because of the history of disease outbreaks in the Pacific which has wiped out societies here."

(REUTERS)

New Zealand prepares to send planes, ssupplies to tsunami-hit Tonga

ByNewsWire
January 18, 2022



New Zealand is ready to assist Tonga in its recovery from the massive undersea volcanic eruption and tsunami that occurred on January 15, senior government officials said on Tuesday.

“Following the successful surveillance and reconnaissance flight of a New Zealand P-3K2 Orion on Monday, imagery and details have been sent to relevant authorities in Tonga, to aid in decisions about what support is most needed,” Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said in a statement.

“However, images show ashfall on the Nuku’alofa airport runway that must be cleared before a C-130 Hercules flight with humanitarian assistance can land,” Xinhua news agency quoted Mahuta as saying.

In the meantime, two Royal New Zealand Navy ships will depart New Zealand on Tuesday, she said, adding that communication issues caused by the eruption have made this disaster response particularly challenging.


New Zealand has taken the decision for both navy vessels HMNZS Wellington and HMNZS Aotearoa to sail so they can respond quickly if called upon by the Tongan government, she said.

“HMNZS Wellington will be carrying hydrographic survey and diving teams, as well as an SH-2G(I) Seasprite helicopter. HMNZS Aotearoa will carry bulk water supplies and humanitarian and disaster relief stores,” said Defence Minister Peeni Henare.

“Water is among the highest priorities for Tonga at this stage and HMNZS Aotearoa can carry 250,000 litres, and produce 70,000 litres per day through a desalination plant,” Henare said.

The survey and diving teams are able to show changes to the seabed in the shipping channels and ports. They will also assess wharf infrastructure to assure the future delivery of aid and support from the sea, he said, adding that the journey for both ships will take three days and they will return to New Zealand if not required.

A C-130 Hercules aircraft is on standby to deliver humanitarian aid and disaster relief stores including collapsible water containers, generators and hygiene kits for families once the airport runway is cleared, according to the New Zealand Defense Force.

Other deployments are possible in the next few days, subject to Tongan government requests and permissions, and Covid-19 border rules, Mahuta said.

Tonga is currently free of Covid-19 and operates strict border controls to keep the virus out.

All current support is being delivered in a contactless way. Officials are in discussions around long-term options for support, she added.

The New Zealand government has also allocated a further NZ$500,000 in humanitarian assistance, taking its initial funding total to NZ$1 million.

Tsunami waves hit Tonga on January 15. The tsunami followed a series of violent eruptions from underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, 65 km north of the country’s main island Tongatapu.

New Zealand has pledged to provide support for Tonga following the volcanic eruption that sent tsunami waves crashing onto the Pacific island.

How larger body sizes helped the colonizers of New Zealand

More weight helped voyagers survive cold ocean journey

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – For the first time, researchers have developed a model to estimate how much energy the original colonizers of New Zealand expended to maintain their body temperatures on the cold, harrowing ocean journey from Southeast Asia.

 

Results showed that people making the first voyages from Tahiti to New Zealand in sailing canoes would expend 3.3 to 4.8 times more energy on thermoregulation – the technical term for maintaining body temperature - than those making a trip of similar length to Hawaii.

 

The ocean route to New Zealand required much more energy for thermoregulation because it went through harsher and colder conditions than the one to Hawaii, said Alvaro Montenegro, lead author of the study and associate professor of geography at The Ohio State University.

 

The findings help provide additional evidence supporting the long-standing theory of why Polynesians of today have a distinctive body type – relatively larger, heavier, bulkier – that is more often found in populations that live in higher latitudes with colder climates.

 

“It has been long hypothesized that the first trips to New Zealand were much harder on the body of settlers than trips of similar lengths to places like Hawaii,” Montenegro said.

 

“We were able to put together a model to actually measure how much more energy for thermoregulation it would take for people to get there – and show why larger, heavier people would have been more likely to survive the trip.  That’s one reason why their descendants today may have the body types they do.”

 

The study was published today (July 12, 2023) in the journal PLOS ONE.

 

Although much of East Polynesia is tropical, the southern third, including New Zealand, ranges from a warm- to cool-temperate climate.  Researchers say that may be one of the reasons it was one of the last places on Earth to become inhabited. The first people arrived in New Zealand about the 14th century.

 

“The basic question is how difficult would it be on human physiology to sail out of the tropics on these long-distance colonizing voyages through much harsher environmental conditions than they were used to?” Montenegro said.

 

Researchers believe that these original settlers used double-hulled sailing canoes that probably each had at most a few dozen voyagers on board.

 

Montenegro and colleagues had previously developed a voyage simulation model that estimates how far these boats would travel each day based on winds and currents. In this study, the researchers used that model combined with likely environmental conditions that voyagers would encounter, including air temperatures and wind.

 

To evaluate how body size would affect energy use for thermoregulation on these voyages, the researchers used female and male bodies of three different types. One body type resembled Polynesians of today, a second one was of a higher weight, and the third type had higher body weight and additional subcutaneous fat layer thickness.

 

The researchers estimated how much energy it would take travelers to maintain their body temperature sailing from Tahiti to New Zealand and compared that to travelers going to Hawaii, which they estimated would take about 23 days, similar to the 25-day trip to New Zealand.

 

The model the researchers used did not account for energy used by physical activity, which of course would be an additional need for the voyagers.

 

Results showed that the trip to New Zealand would take significantly more energy than the trip to Hawaii, Montenegro said.

 

Based on a summer trip (which would require less energy than a winter trip), each traveler to New Zealand would require an average of an extra 965 calories a day compared to those going to Hawaii to maintain their body temperature.

 

If this deficit was completely made up by burning fat, those going to New Zealand would lose an average of an extra 5.9 pounds at the end of a 25-day trip.  If the difference was compensated just by use of muscle mass, the whole trip extra weight loss would be about 13.3 pounds.

 

Model calculations showed that travelers with a larger body size experienced lower heat loss, and so had an energy advantage compared to those of smaller body sizes.  The advantage was greater for females.

 

“The trip would be difficult under any circumstances, but our results showed that people of larger body size would have had an advantage under the harsh conditions they faced,” Montenegro said.

 

These findings line up with the larger bodies of Polynesian populations today, including the fact that females are about 31% heavier, and males 24% heavier, than populations to their west.

 

“Our analysis can’t definitively prove that the size differences we see in Polynesia today are the result of larger people being more likely to survive the original trips and colonizing the region, but it certainly is consistent with that fact,” he said.

 

Other authors on the study were Alexandra Niclou of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and University of Notre Dame; Atholl Anderson of Australian National University and University of Canterbury; Scott Fitzpatrick of the University of Oregon; and Cara Ocobock of the University of Notre Dame.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0287290 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Estimated energetic demands of thermoregulation during ancient canoe passages from Tahiti to Hawaii and New Zealand, a simulation analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jul-2023

Simulation study of how body shapes and sizes affected energetic efficiency helps explain relative success of early Polynesian voyaging

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: FIORDLAND IN SOUTHERN NEW ZEALAND. view more 

CREDIT: ATHOLL ANDERSON, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Simulation study of how body shapes and sizes affected energetic efficiency helps explain relative success of early Polynesian voyaging

###

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287290

Article Title: Estimated energetic demands of thermoregulation during ancient canoe passages from Tahiti to Hawaii and New Zealand, a simulation analysis

Author Countries: USA, Australia, New Zealand

Funding: AM received financial support from the Maritime Encounters (M21-0018) project funded by Sweden's Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0287290 

ARTICLE TITLE

Estimated energetic demands of thermoregulation during ancient canoe passages from Tahiti to Hawaii and New Zealand, a simulation analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jul-2023

COI STATEMENT

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.